(femme falafel)

album recommendation

i found a great album a couple of days ago, and it keeps getting better with each listen. unfortunately most of my readers will not be able to truly understand how genius it is because the lyrics are in portuguese. still, much like i can listen and enjoy city pop even though i don’t speak japanese, the music in this album is more than exciting enough on its own. (incidentally, if you like city pop, you will like this album. it also reminds me a lot of Herbie Hancock’s funk disco albums, especially Feets Don’t Fail Me Now and his collaboration with Rod Temperton, Lite Me Up. i love those albums, and if you love them too, you will like this one even if you don’t understand the lyrics).

to be honest i wasn’t expecting it to be so good. i caught a little bit of it on the radio and the jazz chords made me listen to the end. then the host said the name, Femme Falafel, and i was immediately jealous that i didn’t come up with it (a classic laethism and i didn’t even do it). the host said they had recently released their first album, and i went to check. Femme Falafel is actually the musical alter ego of a 28 year old female jazz pianist and singer from Lisbon, and the album (called Dói Dói Proibído, which translates to Forbidden Boo Boo) is just… flawless. the little bit on the radio did not do it justice.

humor is a big part of it (a part most of you unfortunately will not be able to understand). but more than humor, there’s a playfulness and naturalness with language that can only be the product of hours upon hours of obsession with words and rhythms (you can imagine this is something i admire, perhaps more so in my native language, because it’s so much poorer: to find gold in it is harder).

but the playfulness is not just with the words on their own, but in the music itself, and in the dance between the two. this ability to tell a story not just with music but in music reminds me of Steely Dan and Zappa (two favorites). and, quite unbelievably, it’s just as well done and creative as in those classic examples. there is a moment in ‘Camada do Ozone’ where she sings about a poison mushroom (though somewhat implied magic mushroom) and the music slows down to a drowsy and hallucinatory shuffle for two bars or so, underlining the fungal intoxication. this is only one example, but there are many, most of them more subtle than this, caught only upon repeated listening.

the whole album has an attention to detail that again rivals Steely Dan. both in its technical aspects and in tone and themes. the out of step lovable losers and their misadventures, the sincere sarcasm, the detached nostalgia, the whimsical cynicism. even the arrangement of the tracks was careful. it takes the listener on an existential quest, getting darker as it goes, and teasing a more tragic, less festive sequel. from the turning of both feminism and tradition on its head with a medieval romance to the dystopian anxiety of having too many meaningless choices and zero meaningful ones, it is a deeply feminine album too. it’s tender, and vulnerable, and intelligent.

but most of all it is creative in all its aspects. the extended harmony is significant. you can definitely hear the jazz education of the composer in the progressions and the chord choices. it’s a level of sophistication rarely found in pop music, and definitely not as sustained as here (throughout every song, and the whole album). but this is always used with both precision and abandon. in service to the song, not for its own sake. this harmonic sophistication adds a lot of color to the music, elevating it above most things in pop music (not just now, ever). yet at the same time she has an amazing ear for hooky choruses and expectant buildups (Rod Temperton again comes to mind), all while subverting expectations by always downplaying them.

it’s after all a very economical album. half an hour or so. but it’s fully packed, and it rewards repeated listening both musically and lyrically. i really love it, and i’m very happy that there is still innovative and intelligent music being made. and by a compatriot, no less. i even bought the cd.

can’t remember the last time i bought a cd. now i really need a cd player.